UNREST is growing at Newsday as the paper tries to meet its goal of cutting 100 positions, including about half from the newsroom side.

Voluntary buyout packages were presented to all 430 unionized members on the editorial side – members of the Graphic Communications International Union, Local 406.

The deadline is Dec. 1. So far, veteran editor Harvey Aronson, who was a long-time ally of the former editor Howard Schneider, has been among the biggest names to resign.

Aronson, a 40-year veteran of the paper now toiling in the Part II section, said goodbye in an emotional newsroom farewell on Tuesday. He was told that the buyout was “voluntary” but that if he did not comply, he would have no duties, insiders said. So he said so long.

“We’re all walking on eggshells,” said one staffer who is mulling the buyout.

The terms of the buyout are essentially similar to the package offered when New York Newsday folded in 1995.

According to Zachery Dowd, a court reporter who serves as the union rep for editorial, the package includes nine weeks of pay, plus 2½ weeks of pay for each year of service.

He said he had no estimates yet on how many people would accept the package.

Newsday is trying to come to grips with a massive circulation pumping scandal that has forced it to roll back its daily circulation figure by 98,000 papers a day.

Newsday’s new publisher Tim Knight has said if the paper doesn’t get enough voluntary buyouts, it will resort to mandatory cutbacks.

The Part II section and the Washington bureau are said to be the among the prime targets for pruning.

Newsday said that its Washington staff would be chopped to a 6-person bureau, from its current 14-person staff. That figure includes support staff as well as veteran reporters.